


Party Time Dances

by Masterweaver



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, Rairpair week 2020
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:40:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26442853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masterweaver/pseuds/Masterweaver
Summary: "What is love?""Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me--""I'm serious, Neon. What is love? Why do we love each other? It makes no sense!""Ciel, who ever said love had to make sense?"
Relationships: Ciel Soleil/Neon Katt
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Party Time Dances

"Well, this isn't the _worst_ dump I've seen," Neon admitted, dropping her satchel on the couch.

Ciel gave her a baffled look. "Half the apartment is slag."

"And the rest is still pretty functional! I'll say this for Atlas engineering--when it works, it really works." With a flick of her coral tail, Neon skated around the place. "Look! The lights are on! The kitchen's still working! The bathroom... okay, so there's no _bath_ anymore but..." The sound of a flush was followed by a cheer. "We've got working plumbing! YES!"

"That is... not normal?"

"Not _guaranteed,"_ Neon corrected as she skated back into the living room. "Trust me, there are people down in Mantle that would wrestle a beowolf for something this good."

"But this is Atlas," Ciel pointed out.

"And we're under attack by the army of some crazy Grimm lady," Neon replied casually. "This isn't... the worst place we could stay."

Ciel nodded quietly, shutting the door behind her. "Are there any structural weaknesses that need reinforcing?"

"Uh, maybe a couple...?"

"More specifically, are there any apertures through which the Grimm could assault us?"

Neon nodded in understanding. "Oh, windows! Yeah, there's one in the kitchen. I don't think we should board it up, though--what if we need to bail and can't take the door?"

"Why would we not be able to take the door? The Grimm are not usually intelligent enough to perform a pincer maneuver."

Neon gave her an unusually flat look. "It's not the Grimm I'm worried about."

"...ah." Ciel glanced away. "I... see."

An uncomfortable silence descended as both of them avoided looking at each other, each determined not to force the other to talk about the Megoliath that had just barged in and made itself comfortable on the sagging couch.

Of course it wasn't long before Neon decided it was too quiet. "Sooooooooo. You and I are roomates now."

"Roommates," Ciel corrected absently.

"Yeah, that's what I said. Roomates."

Ciel frowned at her. _"Roommates."_

"Roomates."

"...Neon, repeat after me. Room."

"Room."

"Mates."

"Mates."

"Room. Mates."

"Room. Mates."

"Roommates."

"Roomates."

Ciel pinched the bridge of her nose. "Are you purposefully mispronouncing the word in order to irritate me?"

Neon smirked mischievously. "Oh come on, Ciel, would I _ever_ do that to you?"

"Yes," Ciel replied flatly. "Repeatedly."

Neon chortled brightly. "Yeah, no, that's actually how I say roomates. Little Neonism for you there, huh?"

"Words are meant to be comprehended, not mangled."

"Oh my gosh, Kobalt said the exact same thing once!" Neon laughed. "He's always going on about 'proprietary' and 'eloquence' and I'm like, dude, you punch people with... with a metal..."

She trailed off, slumping onto the couch and curling her tail around her waist.

Ciel hesitated for a moment. Then, gently, she sat down next to the woman, putting a hand on her shoulder.

"It still doesn't feel real, you know? I mean, I saw him die. I saw that Teryx rip him in two and--and I didn't even do the whole 'scream his name' bit, I just killed the Grimm and moved on..." Neon shook her head. "It's like, in all the stories, there's that moment right after somebody gets killed where everybody is like 'oh no,' but it was the middle of a battle and I didn't get that. No dramatic zoom in of the camera, not even a music sting. I keep forgetting that he's dead."

"I... I am sorry for your loss," Ciel offered gently.

Neon scoffed, though there was no heart to it. "You and everyone else. You didn't know the guy, Ironwood only remembered him as 'a member of team FNKI,' none of us got a chance to make a eulogy. And yeah," she cut Ciel off, "I get it. A lot of people died! There's not enough time to mourn! Salem is still right out there with her flying Beringels and that damned whale and... it would have been a waste of time to give us even a moment."

"The general does have a... noted preference for certain kinds of efficiency," Ciel admitted.

Neon stiffened under her grip, turning a glare on her. "A... _preference?"_

Ciel took in her expression, very carefully considering her next words.

"An... _unfortunate_ preference," she offered carefully. "Relegating metaphysical and emotional matters to a secondary concern, while predicating military and tactical matters as the primary issue in any situation."

"A _preference,"_ Neon repeated, her tone very tense.

"...I will admit it does not seem to be entirely... ah... rational."

"Oh no," the girl growled, "not entirely rational, no, it seems like a whole damned OBSESSION!"

She shrugged off Ciel's hand, skating around the room as she ranted. "Big guns! Big airships! Big army! Let's just shoot all our problems because that fixes everything! I just--I..." She sighed, drifting on her wheels until her head bumped into a wall. "What the hell are we doing, Ciel? Fighting Grimm, day in and day out, and for what?"

"To keep the people safe."

"To keep the people safe..." Neon didn't even look up, pointing at the slagged half of the apartment. "So what's that all about?"

Ciel said nothing for a moment or two.

"...It is... difficult," she admitted, "to consider that the things one believes in, the concepts one has devoted their entire life to, might be... flawed. Until recently, I myself had no reason to consider whether the Atlesian military was... operationally unsound. Certain aspects of Atlesian culture, certainly, but the military was supposed to purify those imperfections. Forge raw and flawed and sometimes terrible people into paragons of... some sort or other."

"Ha."

Ciel wrung her hands. "But then... I discovered that my teammate, somebody who I trusted was... well... a machine. A robot. And she was torn apart in front of the world and..." She paused, trying to put her thoughts to some sort of speech. "I can understand the idea that she was an experiment. An attempt to make a perfect soldier. She never acted that way, though... she was curious and naive and always snuck out to explore Vale. I thought she was a child of the Atlesian elite whose parents sheltered her and then bribed the academy to let her in. Not... a machine."

Neon turned around, giving her a look. "But she's got aura, right? A soul and all that?"

Ciel shut her eyes. "That is the sort of question I started asking myself. And it was only compounded by how the general treated the situation, how he treated... Penny." She took a breath. "Suffice it to say, prior to that point I had no reason to consider any of my belief systems invalid, and afterwards.... I had to seriously reconsider my position on some matters."

"...Is that why you helped me get out of the Academy?"

"Perhaps. I... honestly could not tell you right now." She cleared her throat. "My intended statement was that the general has been operating under a certain mindset for so long that he... may be incapable of recognizing the flaws inherent to it."

Neon rolled her eyes, but skated around the couch anyway. "Well... whatever. I don't want to think about that sort of thing right now. We've got an apartment! We're roomates!"

_"Roommates."_

"Whatever! Anyway there's no bed--or bedroom, anymore--so I guess we're going to have to share the couch."

Ciel huffed, pulling her backpack off. "Or we could use the bedrolls provided in this standard-issue excursion pack I managed to obtain before we left the Academy."

"Huh. That's... actually convenient."

"I do not approve of the methods of efficiency the general uses," Ciel admitted, "but that does not mean I disapprove of efficiency in general."

Neon blinked for a moment, before smirking. "I suppose general purpose general goods generally generate general geniality."

Ciel stared at her for a moment.

"...oh, that... that wasn't an intentional pun, was it?"

"No. No it was not."

"Right... let's just get set up, I guess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt for this chapter: "Roomates."


End file.
